Another downside: Because there's nowhere to stash good speakers, even the most advanced multimedia portables with a built-in CD-ROM drive have dreadful sound, a joke compared to desktop models with their relatively beefy soundblasters.

Unlike so-called "max" CD-ROM drives that reach top performance only on the outermost tracks of the disc, the Kenwood 52X TrueX CD-ROM, based on TrueX technology from Zen Research, delivers an unprecedented typical transfer rate ranging from 6750 KB to 7800 KB per second across the entire disc.

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